Weak
by The Phantom of Avenue B
Summary: Benny recalls his love for Mimi, his struggles to form a relationship with her and the fact that maybe it was doomed all along. Oneshot BennyMimi. Rating for drug and sexual references, and language. Somewhat alternate universeish... there are some real p


**Author's Note: **I don't own RENT or any of the affiliated affiliations, etc.

I am not a philosopher. I am not even a good man. I am a landlord.

But I have also been a lover, and I know that those we love the most are the ones who kill us. They kill us not with knives or arsenic, bullets or a smothering hand, but through eyes grown cold: cold as a heart gone still despite all your attempts to revive it.

Those who imagine they know me believe that I am not capable of love. I know, though they do not dare say it to my face, that they despise me. In their eyes I am a hardhearted, avaricious social climber who sheds his friends for a higher rung in the societal ladder – motivated only by selfish lust for personal gain. Once I would try to convince myself that they were jealous of my success, but that is small comfort anymore; besides, now I hardly know who is jealous.

Mimi was her name. Is. I find myself having to remember that she is not dead, though somehow everything would be easier if she was. If she had died, I would weep for her, of course I would, and long for her and miss her sweet smile; but there would be solace in the fact that mine would have been the last face she saw. But as it is, I worry that I might see her, I desperately want to see her, and these are equally possible and equally horrendous ideas.

You will wonder why Mimi and I are not together. Mimi… how strange it is to write her name! How strange it is, too, that she does not love me. I do not know why. I loved her in every way I knew to express. But I suppose she, too, despises me, as do the others.

I began to lose Mimi as soon as I thought I finally had her. Or perhaps I never had her at all, and the whole course of our relationship was just a gradual realization of this.

It began, of course, when she and Roger fell out. I had suspected (and hoped for, I admit) this event's coming for some time. Roger is an impatient man, a dreamer, as artists are. He could not see past Mimi's flaws – namely, the drugs – to the soul that _I _saw: raw, damaged, yes, but beautiful in its imperfection. In his idealist fantasies he imagined a perfect Mimi free of human error, while when I looked at her I saw a kindred spirit.

We matched like two shards of one broken vessel – each rejected, each ambitious (oh, I saw it in her, to be sure – that need to be admired), each secretly desirous of those arms that would hold us and support us so we need never show the world our weakness. Yes! I, Benjamin Coffin III, I say I am weak. Mimi was my weakness, and my aim in living; and I had faith that someday, she would feel the same for me.

I began to court her with subtle sympathies, not in outward words – for I had no wish to speak Roger's name in front of her – but in gentle pressure of my hand on her arm in silent solidarity; in secret smiles for her alone, when I wore my heart so openly on my sleeve it is small wonder it was eventually punctured. I did not rush her. I danced small circles around her, slow and patient, stepping lightly away when she thought me too close. But I was inexorable too, because I loved nothing so well as those times when she seemed to open to me, just a little, like a dormant flower spreading its petals to the sun.

It took time, but time was nothing of consequence to my idolatry. Eventually, when I thought it safe, I asked her to dinner, and to my surprise she agreed to come. It was an uneventful evening, but I went home and was unable to sleep for elation. I felt that I had finally gotten through to Mimi, and I was as happy as only a man in thoughtless, blind, optimistic love can be. My contentment only explains the relationship's imminent doom, rather than making it seem less likely. In my experience, personal happiness is always balanced by a period of equal unhappiness.

One evening became two, then three, then five. And then Roger left for Santa Fe, and I allowed my hopes to rise. With that last threat gone, I began to take Mimi out to dinner most every night. Otherwise, frankly, I feared she might forget to feed herself entirely; she was looking thinner every time I saw her.

Then one night I came to pick her up at the club when her working day was over, and I entered the dressing rooms to find her alone. She was the last one there; sitting in front of a mirror, staring into the reflection of her thin face, a cotton ball wadded in her hand. The blood-like smudge of lipstick around her full lips revealed that she had been removing her makeup.

I came behind her and, though I was certain she saw me in the mirror, she flinched as I placed my hand on her bare arm. I froze, a knife twisting in my gut. She would never realize the cruelty that that sign conveyed to me in that moment – that sign of her indifference, her disgust, even. I would have turned and gone then without a backward glance had she not stood then and kissed me.

In tender amazement I wrapped my arms about her. Mimi had never touched me before, save for distant, platonic hugs and tight-lipped pecks on my cheek. I kissed her in return, and when she lay down there on the shabbily carpeted floor of the dressing room, I fell with her.

It would seem that this would be enough – now that my physical need for Mimi was sated, now that she would touch me and lie in the circle of my arms at night. But even in my infatuated ecstasy I knew that something was wrong.

Mimi began to speak less and less, and when we did speak, we argued. She was shriveling before my eyes, wasting away into shadowed hollows between her bones and under her eyes. The lines of tiny bruises along her arms and thighs grew longer, and more than once large amounts of money went missing from my wallet. She stared listlessly at her food when we dined out, and thought I did not notice when she pretended to eat but instead slipped forkfuls of food into the linen napkin in her lap. When I should have slept in fulfilled tranquility I instead lay awake worrying for Mimi's life.

Our arguments were about rehab. I wanted her to go; she refused. I hardly know why. She seemed to take little pleasure from her daily existence anymore, though I made every effort to be kind to her and treat her with compassion. I am not a good or virtuous man, as I have said, but I believe I came as close to goodness in my days of caring for Mimi as I ever have. Yet despite my care, the only time Mimi seemed to come alive at all was when we kissed, and then her eyes were closed so tightly she seemed afraid to see my face.

One night I invited her to a quiet Italian restaurant in a shadowy corner of the city, where I knew we would be unnoticed or at least unrecognized. We sat in a back corner of the establishment and I ordered a bottle of wine. It was of poor quality, but a couple of drinks and I was brave enough to reach across the table and take her hand.

It was an effort to keep my voice gentle and collected as I gazed into her empty and impassive face. "Mimi," I said, "I need to know that you have considered rehab. You know that I will pay whatever is necessary for you to be cured. I can't stand to see you suffer, and I- "

A muscle tightened in her jaw. "If you can't stand to see me suffer, Benny, then kill me," she said shortly. "I will not accept your charity."

I struggled to quell my irritation. Had she ever said "Thank you for your kindness, Benny, and your obvious dedication to me", or "Yes, Benny, I will live for your sake"? No. She made threats and grim comments and called my love _charity_.

"Mimi, you can't give up on life," I said earnestly, trying to take advantage of the fact that this was one of her more alert days. I had to make an impression. "You have so much to live for. You have me, you have- "

"What?" she interrupted me again, bitterly. "What do I have, Benny? Nothing."

I do not truly know what possessed me then, only that I felt a sudden wave of despair and frustration. I gripped her wrist and flipped her arm over, ignoring her reflexive gasp of indignation and pain, and watched the dim light fall on those delicate bruises.

"This, I said bitterly, "this is all you have, Mimi. All you want to have." I released her after a moment and watched her rub her wrist. "Jesus," I muttered, fighting the shame I felt as tears sprang to my eyes. "I understand why Roger left you."

I looked up in time to see her jaw drop, to see the pain rush to her eyes like blood to a fresh wound. She gasped sharply and leapt to her feet. I followed suit instinctively to steady her, but she violently struck my hands away, breathing hard as though winded.

I met her eyes and managed to hold them, but I too felt suddenly out of breath. By bringing up Roger's name I had violated our code, and nothing could ever be the same again. Already I tasted the acrid tang of loss and regret stinging in my mouth.

Fervid hate conquered disbelief in her beautiful eyes. "How dare you?" she hissed. Her eyes narrowed. "You are a bastard, Benny," she said evenly, enunciating her words with relish. "You are selfish, greedy, spiteful…" she seemed to rack her mind for more adjectives suitable for my despicableness. "And I don't believe you've ever done anything for anyone but yourself."

I listened without daring to speak a word in my own defense. All I felt was a deep and grave disappointment, that Mimi knew these things about me, that she too must hate me like everyone else, that maybe all this revealed was that I would never change. I could not change myself any more than I could heal Mimi simply by loving her. So I looked her in the eye for as long as I could.

"Yes," I said sadly.

Her gaze was full of contempt. I don't know whether she could have hated me more then had I lain at her feet and groveled for forgiveness.

"I always knew you were an egotistical asshole," was her last stab at me, "but I never realized you were so weak."

I hardly recall her leaving, which must have been only moments later. I do not know how I found my way home, or, for that matter, went to a meeting with an investor the next day. But somehow, I went through the motions and stayed alive.

I did not think. I did not dream, but I slept – I slept as I had not been able to when I was with Mimi. But she was never far from my thoughts; at the edge of my consciousness she hovered, delicate and utterly breakable. I feared if I thought about her too much, or tried too hard to conjure up an image of her in my mind's eye, she would simply vanish.

Days bled on into weeks and weeks into months, everything faded into one mass of sameness. Life went on, barely, and I continued to work. In fact, I did little else. I woke early and worked late, finding the most trifling little minutiae to occupy my hours. I was a machine, hardly eating, sleeping the sleep of the dead. I smiled and shook hands and signed my name, but inside, I was breaking. You see, there was no doubt in my mind that Mimi was dead.

I woke each morning hearing the echo of the words that had driven her off- _my_ words. Following close on their heels was a surge of grief that always took me unawares, like a giant wave rising from a calm sea. It always left me close to tears, writhing in the knowledge that the one woman I had ever loved was beyond my reach forever. I am not a devout man, but in those long months, I believed sincerely that Mimi was somewhere better than here – however clichéd that sounds, I had to believe it, no matter how equally sincerely I believed that I myself would never find my way to such a place.

I do not understand the workings of the human psyche. I still do not entirely know why my words appalled her as they did, and caused her to lash out at me. Perhaps she only wanted a reason, however slight, to tell me just what she thought of me. I do not wish to think that she should be so cruel. Yes, Mimi has done wrong to me, great wrong, but I too have spoken when I should have held my tongue. Though I fear the thought, it is likely I have done as much harm to Mimi has she did to me. After all, love is damaging; like a two-headed snake, it bites at both ends.

Some nights, as I was going back to my apartment, I was unable to resist the urge to go to the club where Mimi worked and wait by the door. I never went inside – that would have been too much, even for me in my grief. I would lean against the grimy wall, feeling the bass-heavy music pulse through me, and mourn that Mimi had not thought me enough to live for.

But some things I did as always. It was one of the most menial tasks of all that brought me to my moment of great joy. I doubt that there has ever been a man but me who has found a bill in his pile to a source that he does not recognize – and rejoiced. But this very thing happened to me as I was doing my taxes that April. I lifted the envelope with trembling hands, and, without hesitation, bolted from my apartment.

I went directly to the block of lofts where Mimi had once lived, my heart racing. Could the envelope's meaning be the sign for which I had hoped? I did not go to Mimi's room, and certainly not Roger's, but to Maureen's – the first one I saw. I fell at the door and pounded it with my fists.

Maureen opened the door after a time, looking irritable and a bit hungover. I stumbled in and may have seized her by the shoulders – I don't recall.

"Maureen- what is this?" I brandished the envelope. Furrowing her brow, she reached for it and worked it free of my fingers. It seemed an age passed as she attempted to read it.

Slowly a smile passed across her face. She pushed it back at me. "Oh yeah," she said. "Mimi told one of us to tell you. She's at that clinic. You know." She held one hand blearily to her head, her irritation returning. She eyed me distastefully. "You didn't notice she was gone until your money went too, did you, Benny? Now get out of my- "

Forgetting my long-standing enmity with Maureen, I swept her up in a hug and kissed her forehead. "Thank you!" I said, releasing her. I fled from her room ad heard her door bang shut behind me.

I jogged down the sidewalk, my fingers closed tightly around the bill from the rehab clinic. Suddenly, the sooty grey of the sky shone a beautiful color of pearl, and the dirt of the city became dirt where my Mimi's feet would walk again. I was incredulous that I had spent such a long time grieving when she was alive, somewhere in this city. She was alive – it was a sheer miracle! And in a small way, I was helping her to get well. The irony did not strike me then – that my money was repulsive until one of them needed it for something.

Though my life had been restored to me, I lived distractedly, waiting. I still worked, but now my mind was wholly elsewhere – with Mimi. I stopped checking phone messages; I lived an anxious, unsettled life, giddily happy but somehow suspended. I was certain now that Mimi would come back to me – as certain as I had been that she was dead, I now was positive that she was alive and healthy and missing me.

I did not know it, but I was slowly isolating myself. I talked only when required to do so by my job, and outside of work, I sat in silence, my mind churning and yearning. I stopped in cafes and drank coffee by the windows, watching intently outside lest Mimi happen to walk by. I told myself I must be vigilant – Mimi would look different, surely; healthier, less thin, her skin radiant and her long hair thick and lustrous. There was irony here, too: I, who had always prided myself on my independence, now revolved my entire life around a single other person.

The passing of the weeks and months without a single sign or word of Mimi took its toll on me, though I did not know it at the time. I became thin, for food had no appeal to me, not when Mimi could be alive and looking for me. I eventually stopped going anywhere but to work, because I did not want to miss Mimi. It broke my heart to think of her coming to my door and finding an empty flat, when she'd been away so long.

I imagined our meeting over and over. The shame of my obsession burns me now, but I never thought to be self-conscious. If you want to know, I do still love Mimi, but not in the all-consuming wildfire passion that controlled me then. Now my love is an ache like an old wound – like a throbbing in an amputee's ghost leg. Once, the pain of it was so acute I thought I should die. Now it is healed – at least partially – and I know that despite what I might want, I will keep living; probably to a ripe old age. It's true what they say, that the good die young and the rest just keep living and living and not dying (as everyone wishes they would).

In my mind, Mimi would come to the door and knock quietly. I would go and open it after waiting a minute – believing perhaps that it was someone else. I would open the door just as she was turning to go, and she would wheel around and stare searchingly into my eyes. She would be afraid, you see, that I would be angry. But I wouldn't be, of course. And then she would come to me and kiss me of her own volition, with her eyes wide open, and her tears would be of happiness.

I always knew, I suppose, in my heart of hearts, that this sentimental scene would never occur. Even if Mimi did come to my door like that, neither of us would realistically behave so romantically. We are not like that. We would probably argue and be cold and distant with each other. The yearning would not come out until later; at least, I hoped it would. But even an argument would be welcome – anything to see Mimi as she once was, passionate and unafraid.

Little did I know that I would see Mimi again soon, but the circumstances would be unlike any I would imagine in my most tormented nightmares.

I remember the night vividly. Of course, moments hat are pleasant and happy are rarely remembered for long, but the bad ones always leave the most intense and long-lasting indentation. It was a night in December, very cold and dark as night by five o'clock. I had still not heard from Mimi, and that night she was heavily on my mind. As I stopped in a café after work, I felt somehow guilty, huddled at a table in my winter layers around a cup of coffee. Was it because I did not know if Mimi had the same comforts as I? I don't know. But the coffee failed to warm me, and pushing the cup to a corner of the table with a couple crumbled dollars. I left the café.

The wind, shrieking down the gully formed by downtown buildings, took me off guard as I emerged from the quiet café. I reeled on my feet and gathered my coat around me. As I stared up the road, the first wet drops of snow stinging my face, I felt choked by a sudden wave of desperation. Somehow, I thought irrationally, my fate was out there in the dark night, in the shadows that neon lights could not touch. The thought of it made me feel strangely empty. I pressed my fist to my hollow stomach as though trying to discern what lay under my skin: whether it was flesh and warm blood under there, or a swirling nothingness of dark.

Feeling sick, I bowed my head against the wind and walked as quickly as I could. I was not walking toward my apartment – I have no idea where I planned to go. I suppose now that my days without eating had finally taken their hold on me, as well as the hours I sat upright, wide awake, in the middle of the night. It was a kind of insanity that powered me as I shoved past other pedestrians, deaf to their protestations.

I walked for a long time, until my vision began to blur and fade. I stumbled against a gritty building wall and stared dizzily down the alley at its side, which seemed to form a tunnel, spinning and frighteningly black. I pushed myself away from the wall and staggered back. The world swung around me and I found myself on the ground, startled, my throat closing in. I rolled onto my stomach and retched violently, though my stomach was empty. Some of my senses returned then and I lay with my cheek pressed against the cold asphalt, tears of shame burning in my eyes.

_Mimi, _I thought, or maybe I said it aloud, and I sank into an oblivion of grief and loss.

_Mimi, this is what I am come to for you. For you I lie here, a broken and defeated man, in the cold and the wind. For you I, a proud man, weep in a deserted downtown alley, starving and exhausted. For you I am ruined. I will die without you, because otherwise I would live without you, and I am too weak for that._

I drifted in a freezing sea of interminable darkness, under a night without stars. But eventually my eyes opened, and, slowly, I stood. Fatigue made me unbalanced and unreasoning, but there was still a sane part of my mind that convinced me to keep moving, to go anywhere but here. I steadied myself against the building again for a moment, then moved away, away from the hounds of misery and exhaustion that bayed at my heels.

I kept walking, slow and defeated. I now see it as a miracle that I was not assaulted. After all, my suit was fine, and I had a bulging wallet in my pocket. In my reduced state, I would have been a pathetically easy target.

The moon shone coldly in the deep sky, observing me as I walked down narrowing, gritty streets. I turned down alley after alley, winding my way deep into the underbelly of the city. I remember eyes watching me from the shadows, but perhaps they, like so much of this night later seemed to be, were just a dream.

I remember, too, stopping, sinking down in an alley with my back against a wall, the cold seeping through my coat. I closed my eyes and felt I could imagine what everyone would think when they found my body. My associates would, no doubt, be disappointed. But I could be replaced easily enough. But what about _them _– my once-friends? They would be relieved, I supposed. They would not miss someone they thought inhumane and grasping.

I could not think of Mimi. I could not imagine her weeping over my grave any more than I could imagine her laughing and kicking dirt upon it. I could not imagine her at all. Her face was fading from my mind, and I could no longer hear her voice. This more than anything was what brought on the onslaught of tears. I sobbed quietly into my hands and tried to think of her saying my name – in sweetness, in anger, I did not care, I only wanted to her hear say "Benny… Benny…"

"Benny…"

It took me a long time to open my eyes. My hands slid from my face and I sat in utter stillness, waiting to hear that sound again. Everything stopped: my heart, the wind. My eyes searched the darkness and I slowly moved to my hands and knees and began to crawl into the alley.

I came across her within moments. My astonishment at this coincidence was quickly surpassed by horror. I could hardly make out Mimi's face, but what I saw was frightening: jutting cheekbones accompanied with skeletally hollow cheeks, sunken eyes and a swathe of ragged hair sweeping across a grayish forehead. Yet I knew it was her, and I reached for her and touched her damp cheek. Her brow furrowed fleetingly and she turned her head slightly toward me, and again her dry lips formed that word.

"_Benny…" _

The whisper was hoarse, barely audible, but unmistakable. "Oh, Mimi, oh Mimi," I whispered, and I reached down and pulled her into my arms. She weighed nothing: her heavy coat swallowed her body, and her long legs, draped over my arm, looked thin as two fingers. I stood, holding her close to my body, suddenly strengthened. Mimi was in terrible danger. She was closer to death than I, and that idea was intolerable. If one of us was to go, it would not be her.

Carrying Mimi gently in my arms, I moved as quickly as I could out of the alley. The fact that I was utterly lost never occurred to me. My head swam, but my vision was sharp and clear. I moved into a slow run, bearing Mimi like a firefighter bears a blaze victim or a mother bears a child. The night swept by, and though my legs ached and my lungs burned, I never once slowed.

Mimi had wanted me. I did not know how she had come to be here, on the streets, when I had known her to be at the clinic. Maureen had told me where she was – had she lied? No, it was impossible; I had seen the evidence of the bill. But none of that mattered now. I was running down the street with Mimi in my arms, and she had whispered my name. She had known who was the most faithful to her, the one who had loved her and missed her for so long. She had known who would be the one to save her.

The lights burned me as I reached the center of the city again. I ran blindly, but my feet knew the way. I know that I was guided somehow that night. If I wasn't, how do you explain how I found my way safely back to the apartment?

I fumbled the key in the lock and pushed open the door, leaving it open behind me. I wish to God now that I had left it shut – it would have locked automatically.

The only light to greet me was the blinking red light on my answering machine, something I saw every day since I started ignoring my messages. I carried Mimi to my room in the dark and laid her on my bed, then crossed back to the door and turned on the light.

I realized as I turned to look at her curled form on the bed that I had not felt her breathing throughout the whole journey. I flew panicked to her side and grasped her face in my hands, silently pleading. She was so still, so pale… she couldn't be dead! But no, I felt her shallow breath on my hand. She was still there.

Another thought occurred to me. I dashed into the kitchen, where a pile of mail had accumulated, and began to pick up envelopes one by one. A letter from a college friend… a bill from the electric company… but nothing from J. Clark Rehabilitation Clinic. I thought frantically. How long had it been since Mimi had dropped out? How long had she been on the streets?

I rushed back to my room and looked down at her. She was sweating, and as I watched a small moan shook her frail body. _Sweating. Hot. _I was frantic, which is the only excuse I have for forgetting the treatment for a fever. My hands trembling, I unbuttoned her coat and pushed it aside. Underneath she wore only a thin shirt, but it was soaked through with perspiration. She began to shake.

I knelt down beside the bed and gathered one of Mimi's bony hands in mine. I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead on our three clasped hands, and not knowing why, I prayed.

_Oh, God… save her… please save her. She is all I have. Without her I will die. I am not as strong as you think. I am not strong at all. Look at me… I do not know how to save her. I cannot stand to lose her again._

And I did not want to lose her, but I stood up and walked back into the kitchen to call the hospital.

At that moment, my door was flung fully open with such force that it bounced violently off the wall and nearly slammed shut again. In stormed Maureen, followed closely by Joanne.

"Benny!" screamed Maureen. Her face was pale and tight. "You asshole – what have you been doing? I've been calling you for weeks – Mimi's missing – do you- "

Suddenly she froze, and I realized too late that I had glanced toward the bedroom. Maureen's eyes narrowed to slits. "No," she muttered. Shoving past me, she raced down the hall to my room. Joanne followed after looking at me in a strangely sympathetic way.

I walked after them and saw Maureen staring horror-struck down at Mimi's shivering form. She looked up at me, her eyes wide and burning. I ignored her and went to kneel by Mimi, placing my hands gently on her clammy arms. But I could not help recalling the day she flinched at my touch, and I withdrew my hands.

"Benny." The poison in Maureen's voice drew my eyes upward, and then everything happened so quickly, too quickly. I stood and Maureen slapped me with all her strength, so that I fell backwards against the wall and slid dizzily to the floor. Joanne lifted Mimi and carried her away, and I had to shield my face with one hand to look up at Maureen looming against the light.

"Benny, you bastard" - even now it struck me that Mimi had chosen the same word - "don't you realize you may have killed her? She's freezing to death, and you took her coat and had her lying in the cold – why didn't you call me? Mimi's been – we've been so- " She stopped as though reaching a revelation. "You unbelievable…" she stopped herself again and took a deep breath. She leaned down over me.

"How long have you been keeping her here, Benny?" she asked icily.

Then she was gone, the door slammed, and I was alone.

You understand now, everything. No, I am not a good man; I loved Mimi selfishly and wanted her to be mine only. But I am not bad either. I would not hide a dying woman in my room for weeks for the pleasure of watching her die as my captive. What kind of pleasure is that? What kind of love is that?  
You see now too what they think of me. You see that my loss is permanent now, for even a disease decays more quickly than does hate. Mimi hates me, and she is not alone; she has Roger, she has the others, while each day I sink further into loneliness and that inescapable mire called regret.

I am weak.


End file.
